QBCore to QBox Migration: The 2026 Guide for Live FiveM Servers

Published on | Updated

QBox has become the standard recommendation for new FiveM roleplay servers in 2026. How to migrate a live QBCore server to qbx_core without losing player data, what the compat layer actually covers, and when staying on QBCore is the right call.

FiveM server hosting

The FiveM framework landscape shifted through 2026: QBox, the community fork built on qbx_core and the ox ecosystem (ox_lib, oxmysql, ox_inventory), is now the standard recommendation for new roleplay servers, and it ships as a txAdmin recipe you can deploy in minutes. That leaves thousands of established QBCore servers asking the harder question: migrate a live city, or stay put?

Update, 4 November 2026: on 29 October 2026 txAdmin removed QBCore from its recipe list and marked that recipe deprecated (txAdmin recipes commit 5d7f7b36), and on 30 October the Cfx.re docs took QBCore off their frameworks list (docs commit). ESX Legacy and Qbox are the roleplay framework recipes txAdmin still offers. This does not stop a running QBCore city, and the migration path below already starts from the Qbox recipe.

Should You Migrate at All?

Honest answer first. Migrate if:

  • Your server is early enough that your resource list is mostly standard qb- resources
  • You are fighting QBCore bugs that QBox already fixed
  • You want the ox stack's performance and actively maintained core

Stay on QBCore for now if:

  • You run a large, heavily customized city with dozens of paid or custom resources
  • Your scripts are deeply tied to QBCore internals rather than its public APIs
  • Your city is stable and your player count is healthy, because a working city is worth more than a modern framework

A migration is a project, not an afternoon. Budget a weekend minimum and a staging server always.

What QBox's Compatibility Layer Covers

QBox ships a qb-core compatibility bridge, which is what makes migration realistic at all: most resources written against QBCore's exports keep working on qbx_core without edits. What the bridge covers well is the common export surface most shop, job, and interaction scripts use. What it cannot cover is resources that reach into QBCore's internals or rely on framework behavior that QBox deliberately changed. Every migration finds a handful of these, which is exactly what the staging phase is for.

Requirements Before You Start

  • FXServer build 10731 or newer, with OneSync on: qbx_core's manifest lists both as dependencies, along with ox_lib and oxmysql, so update your server artifact first (the txAdmin recipe switches OneSync on and installs the latest oxmysql release)
  • MariaDB 10.9.0 or newer: QBox's install guide says MySQL is not supported and recommends MariaDB 12.3 LTS for new servers, so if your city runs on MySQL today, moving the data to MariaDB is part of the migration
  • A full backup: database dump plus a complete copy of your resources folder and server.cfg, taken while the server is stopped so the dump is consistent

The Migration Path

  1. Stage it. Deploy the QBox txAdmin recipe on a second server instance with its own MariaDB database. The recipe imports QBox's SQL into whatever database you connect it to, so never point it at your live one. This gives you a known-good QBox baseline to migrate onto, rather than performing surgery on your live city.
  2. Restore and convert a copy of your data. Load a dump of your live database into staging, then work through QBox's converting guide. Characters and money in the players table carry over, but the guide changes a few things. Job and gang grades in qbx_core/shared/jobs.lua and gangs.lua are numbers, where QBCore uses strings. Inventories get converted for ox_inventory, after a backup. The SQL file that ships with qbx_core adds a last_logged_out column and switches players.citizenid to the utf8mb4_unicode_ci collation, and convertjobs in the txAdmin console fills the new player_groups table. Then check that a handful of real player accounts load with the right money, items and jobs before going further.
  3. Move resources over in groups. Start your custom and third-party resources in batches on staging, watching the console per batch. Resources that error against qbx_core go on a fix list: check whether the author ships a QBox-native version (many now do), whether the bridge just needs the resource restarted in the right order, or whether it needs a small export rename.
  4. Test the money paths hardest. Jobs, shops, inventories, and anything that touches player money are where silent breakage hurts most. Run each core loop of your city manually.
  5. Schedule the cutover. Announce a maintenance window, take a final fresh database dump from live, restore it onto the QBox instance, run the same conversion steps on it, and swap. Keep the old QBCore instance intact and stopped for at least a week as your rollback path.

FAQ

Does migrating wipe my players' characters and money? No. Characters and money stay in your database's players table, and the migration converts that database instead of resetting it. That database has to run on MariaDB 10.9.0 or newer, since QBox does not support MySQL, and the conversion steps change some tables, so back up before you run them. With backups in place, the bigger risk is resource incompatibility, which staging catches.

Do qb- scripts work on QBox? Most do, through the compatibility bridge. The exceptions are scripts that touch framework internals, and those are findable on a staging server in an evening.

Can I run QBox with my existing txAdmin? Yes. QBox's install guide is built around txAdmin: in the setup you pick Popular Recipes and then QBox Framework. The recipe connects to a database and imports QBox's SQL into it, so give it a fresh MariaDB 10.9 or newer database rather than your live one. Our txAdmin setup guide covers the basics.

Which framework should a brand-new server pick in 2026? QBox, and our ESX vs QBCore vs QBox comparison covers why in depth.

Host It on Hardware That Keeps Up

Framework migrations are the moment servers also discover their hardware ceiling, since the ox stack's performance gains only show on a server that is not CPU-starved. FiveM hosting plans run on AMD Ryzen 9 hardware with NVMe SSD and DDoS protection on every tier. Before you plan a QBox move on one of our servers, ask us which database your server can use, since QBox needs MariaDB 10.9 or newer and your staging copy needs a database of its own.